My experiences as an IT professional - Anything that I write here is my personal opinion and should not be officially associated with any other entity

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

I've been at my current position for less than a year, every so often I still open a drawer in my office and go WTF?

Today was one of those days. Opened the drawer that the old IT consultant (I'm the first full time IT person that TZ has had - previous consultant worked here 3 days a week) had used to store floppy drives and other accessories for laptops. I noticed that there were some unnecessary papers in the drawer (don't need to keep those AC Adapter manuals) and started to look at what else was in the drawer.

Lo and behold I found a ziplock bag full of twist ties. Twist Ties! You know, those things that come around the cords for every mouse, keyboard, etc. on new systems and parts.

Some of you might think that hoarding twist ties is a good idea, but it certainly breaks my 6-12 month rule.

"If you do an honest assessment and cannot see yourself using an item in the next 6-12 months, dump it!"

-- Alex Scoble's IT People Shouldn't Pack-rat Stuff They Won't Use Within 6-12 Months Rule

I can't even begin to tell you how much paperwork, odd connectors, old cables and other worthless junk I've had to trash since I've gotten here.

So don't be bad. Don't be a pack-rat, cuz pack-rats are bad.

Don't scrimp on the small stuff to preserve your neurosies. If you need to clean up cables on a regular basis, go to Fry's or Graybar and buy a big bag of zip-ties and some velcro straps.

Don't save floppy disks for drivers that you can download from the net and store on your IT file server.

Don't store paperwork that won't make any sense to the next person because you hand wrote a bunch of words haphazardly on a blank sheet of paper.

Don't keep odd cables that haven't been used since the days of the PDP 11/84.

If you are going to hoard, at least keep good stuff that you can use and that doesn't make you look like a complete amateur. It will make you look much better when your slot is filled with another IT person after you leave and will help that next person out a lot as well.

Coming into a new workplace is hard enough without wading through someone else's junk to find the parts, nuggets of information or software that you need.